Why to learn Spanish?

Spanish is widely spoken

Spanish is the official language of over 20 countries. The language dominates almost all Latin America; it’s also present in Europe, Africa and Asia. Spanish is the third most spoken language in the world. There are over 400 million native speakers and more than 100 million non-native speakers.

Easy pronunciation

Spanish is one of the easiest languages to pronounce. The pronunciation is very regular, i.e., there aren’t different sounds for the same letters, like English. The stressed syllable is almost always the second to last. And the only sound that is really hard to pronounce is the “rr”, that can be learned after a few intense hours of training.

Music and dance

The Spanish-speaking countries have a huge variety of rhythms. There are numerous types of music and dance from indigenous, African and European origin and each one is unique. Cuba is the birthplace of several famous rhythms like salsa, merengue and rumba. Mexico has the famous mariachi music; Peru has the marinera; Argentina has the tango and Spain, the traditional flamenco. The most common rhythms are also successful as the Argentine Rock, the Colombian folk music, Mexican pop and the Puerto Rican reggaeton.

Gastronomy

The Latin American cuisine is quite famous for mixing various influences and the Spanish cuisine is one of the healthiest and most famous in the world. Each country has its own characteristics, some examples are:

Argentina: Argentine cuisine is famous for its steaks, wine and empanadas.

Colombia: Colombia is famous for its fruits, coffee and typical dishes such as the arepa, the tamal and lechona.

Spain: beyond traditional paella in Spain is quite famous for its embutidos and ham; Seafood is also characteristic, as well wines.

Mexico: Mexican cuisine has become famous in the United States when their cuisine mixed with American cuisine, known as Tex-Mex. Guacamole, taco, burrito, quesadilla, enchilada, nacho and chili are traditional. Furthermore, pepper is widely consumed in addition to the tequila.

Peru: Peruvian food has become one of the most appreciated in the world; their main dishes consist in fish, pepper, meat and rice. There are several typical dishes like ají de gallina, ceviche and lomo saltado.

You can choose your accent

As there is a wide variety of Spanish speaking countries, there is also a variety of accents. In Spain itself there are different accents such as the Andalusian or the Extremaduran. The Castilian of Castile and Madrid are stronger and has the characteristic positioning of the tongue between the teeth to pronounce the letter “z” or combination of “ce” and “ci”. In Latin America are quite known the following accents:

Rio-platense: Typical of Argentina and Uruguay, they use the “voseo”, and the sound of the “ll” and “y” are pronounced like the sound “j” of the Portuguese.

Chile: the Chilean Spanish is known to cut the letter “s” at the end of words and the intervocalic “d” is barely pronounced.

Mexican: Mexican Spanish has also a different pronunciation of “ll” and “y” both are pronounced as “dj”.

It is an investment for multilingual

If you speak another language that comes from Latin, Spanish is easy to learn and if you learn Spanish you’ll find it easier to learn other Romance languages. Spanish and Portuguese has a vocabulary similarity of 80%. Spanish has also great similarities with Italian, French, Romanian and Galician. Not only the vocabulary is very similar, the grammatical structure is also very similar.

It’s easier to get a job

In Brazil or in United States statistics show that those who speak Spanish can get a job more easily or make more money. Brazil has more than one million Spanish speakers and Argentina is the second largest trading partner of Brazil, the United States has over 20 million Spanish speakers, which is a large consumer market.

Tourism

Most countries where Spanish is the official language have low levels of English proficiency. Knowing Spanish, you can visit Europe (Spain, Andorra) and virtually all Latin America. Knowing Spanish you can make yourself understood in Brazil and easily find a speaker of the language in the United States. You can still chat in parts of Africa (Equatorial Guinea). With the wide variety of countries, it is possible to know the various kinds of places, climates and cultures.

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